The first full-length offering from Ashers, entitled Kill Your Master, is a hard hitting mixture of Punk speed and Hardcore intensity. While the band doesn’t necessarily bring anything too unique or original to the mix, what they lack in that department is backed up by pure force and well composed songs that seem to stem along the expectations of both styles. This approach causes Kill Your Master to be a fun CD, but sadly, that’s about it.

Though Kill Your Master is far from a bad CD, the problem is that the music doesn’t offer much to the listener. Many times, it has that intensity behind it, but due to the production and the distortion on the guitar, it sometimes just doesn’t really seem to work and sounds a bit hollow. The best example of this would be the guitars during “Watch it Burn”, a very fun song off the mix filled with attitude, but with the guitars and drums being such a higher pitch, and the twangy bass chords that follow aoong with the guitars and even sounding a bit flat, it’s hard to take this album for more then simple face value at times. But, luckily this doesn’t sum up all the songs on the release, as this is just a slight template as to how some of the songs on this release seem to sound. All of this comes together to form an album that clearly is based more in Punk then Hardcore, but still retains some very slight Hardcore traits to it throughout, most in the guitar compositions and attitude of the release. The first track off the release, the title track “Kill Your Master”, sets the stage for this release and is really where the band’s harder tendencies show through with fast paced music and sheer intensity. The thing here is that there are very few tracks like this, and most are aimed at mid-paced to a faster paced sound that often just comes off more as for fun, leaving behind most traces of seriousness and Hardcore attitude. “Vanished” is the perfect example of this with it’s faster guitars, but lack of anything really solid behind the music, sounding a little hollow against the production levels.

Aside the higher pitched recording quality, you also have to contend with the vocals and changing of musical styles. First of all, the vocals aren’t too bad, but would be more expected for some kind of edgier Hard Rock group then anything such as The Vines, but they do manage to get up there in volume and heat at times, such as on the song “Now So Clear”. Sometimes even the riffs can border on catchy, more melodic Rock riffs, which can be also be found through t “Now So Clear”, but more at the end of the song. This track also features an audio sample as an introduction to the song, but it really doesn’t do anything outside of adding a feeling of a western meets black comedy spoken word approach, and doesn’t do anything to enhance the album overall, feeling tacked on right from the moment it starts. This isn’t the only time some kind of odd audio section appears on the album, as the closing track “Class of ’94” just comes out of nowhere with a failed barbershop quartet, clearly meant to be a gag, but it sounds horrible and, again, is clearly just tacked on. While Kill Your Master was enjoyable for what it is, this track completely ruins the solidarity of the album, as you expect a good lead out track to make you want to go back and listen again, and/or make you wish they would record a new album quick, but instead you get an amateurish thirty three second clip of the band members screwing around that just closes the album horrible. Had this been a hidden track, then all would have been fine, but as an actual track on the song list, it’s clearly just there to eat up time.

At the end of the album, there’s some good songs that are full of energy, but there are some that are just meant to be fun and in the end aren’t as enjoyable in the long run. Many of the better songs on the album appear at the start of the release, but for the most part the structure and performance of the songs become mechanical overtime, and sometimes it’s even repetitive, like “End of the Rope” and “Vanished” have many elements that are similar, includind how the group chants are performed and the guitars being very similar to the other. In the end, Kill Your Master is a good debut from Ashers, and shows some promise from the band, but needs a bit of a deeper production to fill out the music and not leave it sound as hollow due to the higher pitched instruments, as well as the flaws throughout the release tend to hold it back.